


Splinters and Gas Leaks

by roseygal99



Series: BatFam Angsty/Whumpy Stuff [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Tim Drake Whump, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:14:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseygal99/pseuds/roseygal99
Summary: After a sudden explosion leaves Tim seriously injured, he's forced to rely on his brothers to get him out of the jam.
Series: BatFam Angsty/Whumpy Stuff [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2049657
Comments: 6
Kudos: 228





	Splinters and Gas Leaks

The first thing Tim became aware of was the sound of someone screaming. No, not screaming, he realized. It only felt that way because the voice was so close. This person was panting, saying the same thing over and over, anxious and hurried. Tim struggled to make sense of the words, but his thoughts came and went like confetti on a breeze, quick and fleeting and impossible to hang on to.

The next things he became aware of were hands and arms around him, holding him, and a rhythmic jostling sensation. Someone must’ve been carrying him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been carried anywhere. For some reason the thought almost made him laugh. He was seventeen, after all. Practically a man.

“He’s smiling,” a young voice snapped. The first words Tim had been able to hear clearly. “Why is he smiling?”

“Calm down.” The second voice was older, more steady, but the words seemed to come through clenched teeth.

Finally the world around him faded into view. Tim was staring blearily up at Dick’s jaw as they hurried… somewhere. He couldn’t remember. Dick was sweating and covered in scrapes and bruises. A nasty gash at his hairline was bleeding heavily, forcing him to run with one eye closed.

“You’re… bleeding…” Tim croaked.

Dick looked down at him, shocked. A moment later, Damian popped into view. Half of Damian’s mask was missing; one arm was folded protectively into his chest. They both looked terrible. Tim tried to put the pieces together, to remember how they’d gotten like this, but the confetti in his mind swirled impossibly fast, offering only fragments. An abandoned office building. A hostage. Tim running towards something…

“Just relax,” Dick said firmly, apparently reading the growing frustration and anxiety on Tim’s face. “You’re gonna be okay.”

 _You’re gonna be okay._ That’s what Tim had been hearing earlier – the phrase he’d kept hearing over and over again. But it wasn’t himself that he was worried about.

“Wait,” Damian said suddenly, stopping with his finger to his ear. “What do you mean we can’t…” He paused. Tim realized he was talking to Oracle. “Well then we’ll just move it!” Damian shouted. Then another pause as he listened before, “Fine!”

When Damian didn’t immediately offer an explanation, Dick asked “What is it?”

“We can’t go out this way,” he said, indicating the stairwell they were standing at. Tim noticed that Damian was determinedly looking away from them. His exposed eye glistened with frustrated tears as his hand curled into a fist at his side. For all his posturing and combat experience, he was still just a child. Tim decided to try remember that more often.

“Why not?” Dick pressed.

“It’s blocked.”

“Okay.” Dick took a steadying breath. “Then we’ll just have to find another way. What did Oracle say?”

Damian ground his teeth. “Nothing useful,” he spat.

“Damian–”

“She said to wait, Grayson! Is that what you wanted hear? She told us to ‘stand by.’” Damian never used their real names in the field. He caught himself a moment later, recanting. “I mean Nightwing,” he murmured.

“Did you tell her about…?”

Damian just nodded. Dick cursed under his breath.

“What’s… the big deal,” Tim asked. His voice sounded odd. It was weak and thin. He tried to clear his throat. “You guys got dates or something?”   
Dick and Damian just stared at him, horrified and anxious. It took Tim a little longer than it should have to realize that they weren’t upset because they had to wait. They were worried about him. “I’m fine,” he added hoarsely. “Really. You don’t have to keep carrying me.”

Tim started to climb out of Dick’s grasp, but Dick held tighter. “Tim, don’t–” he began and in that moment, Tim saw it. The reason Damian and Dick had been so stressed. The reason neither of them could stand the idea of waiting even a second longer to get out. The reason Tim had found himself wavering on the edge of consciousness since the moment he’d woken up. The reason, he assumed, he’d passed out in the first place.

“Tim…” Dick said slowly, carefully. Like an officer trying to talk someone down. “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

Damian just stared, wide eyed.

And Tim realized they were both waiting for him to react, probably to freak out. But really as he stared down at himself, he just felt utterly confused. What he was looking at didn’t make any sense. The confetti of his thoughts kicked up again, sending images flashing through his mind.

A hostage.

A gas leak.

Tim running towards the kidnapper.

A gun he hadn’t noticed before.

A single shot.

An explosion.

An explosion, he thought. It was starting to make sense now. He looked at their surroundings as if for the first time. The entire floor looked like a warzone. Rubble everywhere, the ceiling missing, exposing the entirety of the floor above them.

“I fell…” Tim whispered. He remembered the explosion, the floor giving out beneath him. So suddenly he didn't have time to think, to try to slow his decent.

Dick just nodded.

Tim returned his gaze to the wood fragment protruding from his abdomen, realizing for the first time how cold and feverish he felt, how the smell of blood mingled with the dust and smoke on the air to create a sickening perfume. How no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t slow his breathing. “I fell,” he whispered again between gasps.

“He’s going into shock,” Damian said.

“I know.”

Their voices began to swirl together and morph, like a song being played backwards in slow motion. The world rolled nauseatingly around him and, without warning, Tim threw his head to the side and vomited an alarming mixture of blood and saliva. And finally, Tim felt it.

The pain.

He had experienced a lot of injuries in his short life, ranging in severity. Broken bones, gun shots, even nearly lost a finger once in an unfortunate skiing incident. But the thing about pain is that after a while, memories of pain never quite do it justice. Sure you can remember that something hurt, but you’re never quite going to remember exactly how bad it really was.

So now, if you’d asked Tim if he’d ever felt anything like this before, he would’ve said no. Whether or not that was entirely true would be uncertain, but as fire bloomed out from the center of his stomach and raced through his veins, as his body convulsed and writhed involuntarily, as his head snapped back and a scream raked itself free from his throat, he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

Dick cursed again. “He’s bleeding too much.”

“I thought you stitched him up!”

“I did the best I could with what we have,” Dick explained as Tim’s screams gave way to gritted cries. He tried to muffle the sounds in Dick’s chest.

“I know, buddy.” Dick’s voice was tight. Tim felt himself being lowered gently to the floor. He could barely see through his tears, but he saw Dick lean into view, holding something that looked like a pen. “Tim. I need you to take a deep breath, all right? This is gonna get a little rough, but we’re gonna have to cauterize it to stop the bleeding.”

Damian shoved something into Tim’s mouth, saying, “Bite down on this.” Then he disappeared from view again, and Tim felt his wrists being bound and tied to something above his head so that he couldn’t move his arms.

As his uniform was cut away to expose the wound, Tim tried to protest.

 _I’m all right!_ he tried to scream. _I’m all right! Please don’t!_

But his cries were muffled by the makeshift bite guard. Dick just looked at him apologetically then aimed the pen at his wound. A small beam of light appeared from the tip and the next thing Tim felt was white hot pain, centered on a single point in his abdomen, as if the entire sun hand shrunk down to size of a pinprick and lodged itself in his body.

Tim screamed against the object in his mouth, crying and thrashing, but his arms remained immobile, tied to whatever was above him. Meanwhile Damian struggled to keep his legs pinned with only one good arm.

“Damian,” Dick muttered, his eye focused on his work. The other was still occluded with blood.

“I’m trying!” Damian shot back. As time passed, the smell of burning flesh filled the space.

Tim’s flesh.

The thought sent another wave of nausea rolling through him.

“There,” Dick said at last, sitting back with a sigh. “That should keep your guts in at least until we can get you home. You did good, Tim.”

Tim tried to nod, tried to respond at all, but suddenly his head felt incredibly heavy. It bobbled as he tried to hold it up, tried to keep his eyes open and focused as everything in him seemed to be telling him to let go.

“Tim?” Dick asked, getting closer. “Tim, you gotta keep your eyes open.”

 _I am,_ Tim said. Or at least, that’s what he meant to say before everything went dark.

  
*

  
Tim dreamt of plane rides and gauze. He felt hands all around him, smelled the sharp tang of antibiotics and disinfectants. Every once in a while he’d hear a familiar voice or two, asking him to do something, to swallow some pill or bitter medicine. He always obliged, or at least he thought he did. He couldn’t be sure. Everything was a blur of moments and faces.

Occasionally he’d dream of fire and blood. Of pain so intense he thought he might die. In those dreams, hands always came to hold him down, he’d feel a prick in his arm, then sink again into blissful emptiness.

*

  
When Tim finally awoke, he found himself in his room at Wayne Manor. Morning light filtered through the curtains, a breeze blew through, filling the room with the smell of flowers and freshly mowed grass from the grounds. Tim tried to get his bearings, to parse through his dreams and memories. It wasn’t until he tossed aside the covers and saw the bandages across his abdomen that he realized that much of what he remembered had been real.  
He stared at his bandages for quite some time, unable to shake the image of the shard of wood sprouting from his body like a ghastly bone. Finally, he eased his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up gingerly. The movement sent jolts of pain through him, forcing him to gasp and wince as he managed to get himself upright. He was sitting on the edge of the bed catching his breath when Damian appeared, his arm in a sling.

“Trying to escape again?” Damian asked.

  
“A…again?” Tim breathed. Had he tried to get up before? He couldn’t remember that at all.

“Yes, again. Granted, you never made it very far the other times.” Damian entered and leaned against the wall.

“Huh.” Tim could vaguely remember the feeling of the carpet on his face. Had he collapsed before? Judging by the expression on Damian’s face, equal parts amused and concerned, Tim didn’t think that was too far off. “How’s your arm?”

Damian rolled his eyes and scoffed, apparently exasperated by the question. Tim could imagine what he was thinking: _Who the hell cares about my arm?_ He crossed to a corner of the room where there was a walker. “Father wanted me to make sure you didn’t go anywhere for a while without this.” He placed it front and center.

Tim blanched. The idea of using a walker to get around made him physically ill.

Reading his expression, Damian scoffed and sent it clattering across the room. “I told him it was absurd. Why would you need that thing if I’m here?” He said it spitefully, refusing to look directly at Tim all the while.

Tim grinned in spite of himself. “My thoughts exactly.”

The faintest color came into Damian’s cheeks as he joined Tim at the edge of the bed and slipped under one of his arms. With a pained grunt, Tim pushed himself onto his feet, leaning heavily on Damian’s small frame. They eased out into the hall where they found Dick, a few stitches peeking out below his hair.

“Look who’s back amongst the living,” Dick laughed, ducking under Tim’s other arm without hesitation.

Now leaning mostly on his brothers, walking wasn’t so hard. But he couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty. “You know you guys don’t have to–”

“I swear to God, Drake,” Damian said, silencing him instantly. Tim smirked. Fair enough.

“So uh,” he said, still grinning. “Which one of you is gonna help me use the bathroom?”


End file.
